


look at me, i'm burning up

by renaissance



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Developing Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 16:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13391379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: The first tentative overtures, as Percy comes to terms with the person he is on the other side of the War.





	look at me, i'm burning up

**Author's Note:**

> back on my bullshit 2k18, the otp rises again, wherein the "t" is a print error and actually should be a plus sign; it stands for "oliver + percy," which coincidentally is my harry potter otp, the first non-canon hp ship i ever shipped. here's a whole load of headcanon, friendship, a little bit of romance, and some really indulgent wallowing. unbeta'd, etc. let's do this!
> 
> title is from basia bulat's "good advice" (when will i stop using her lyrics as titles? never!) and this fits in with the canon of my other post-war percy fic, [the day beyond now](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10961721).

i.

It’s been so long since Percy was able to just, _wake up_ , keep his eyes closed and let the morning light infiltrate the corners of his vision. He doesn’t remember the last time he slept in, lying in bed with the sheets twisted around his legs and the sound of traffic from the street below creeping in through his half-open window. It’s the height of summer but London isn’t a city for heatwaves—the gauzy curtains blow about in a gentle breeze, and there are clouds overhead, a promise of English summer rain later in the day.

The light in London is different when it’s grey. When Percy’s eyes finally open, they’re drawn to the dull yellow glow on his beige walls, elongated swathes of new colour where the morning sun catches the windowpanes, cut across with the moving shadows of the curtains. And in the corner by the window, a rainbow reflection, bright splotches of fiery red and orange, artificial yellows and greens, and indigo and violet so pale they’re barely there. Percy wishes he had a camera. He wishes he could paint. More than anything, he wishes he could stay in bed forever, until the rains come, and watch the way the light changes on the walls.

His therapist tells him to focus on the little things. He tells her he does focus on the little things. He’s always focusing on the little things, making sure he gets out of bed on the same side every morning and stepping around the cracks on busy city pavements. He’s even getting better at eating proper breakfast each morning, at brushing his teeth every night. She says that’s not what she means—it’s about appreciating the details of life, like the way the light plays across your bedroom in the early morning. It’s about realising that work isn’t and never was the be-all and end-all. The goal, she says, is _living_.

Well, Percy couldn’t go to work even if he wanted to. He’s on an enforced leave of absence. Minister Shacklebolt says he can’t return until November. It feels like years away. Percy had argued, and Shacklebolt had said, “Let me rephrase that. The Minister has no need of a Senior Assistant until November. You may resume your work as soon as I have need of you, and no sooner. Do you understand, Percy?”

He understood well enough. It’s what Shacklebolt doesn’t understand, what Percy’s therapist doesn’t understand, what his family will probably never understand. He never thought work was the most important thing in his life. He didn’t work because he loved it, because he couldn’t do anything else. He did it because it was what he was best at, and there’s never anything he’s loved so much as knowing he’s the one needed for the job.

It’s not so easy to place himself now, adrift with nothing to occupy his time but his own crushing guilt. There’s nothing for him to be the best at around his tiny flat. He can perform the same cleaning spells until there’s not a whiff of dust around, and he treat himself and go to the upmarket Muggle greengrocer around the block, he can come home and cook something he can’t even pronounce. But without anyone around to see it—

He’s never been a dependent person, never needed other people around to bolster his happiness. But he’s always hated being ignored.

At last, he gets out of bed. He walks to the window, and the light shrinks away from him like it’s been hexed, dimming to dull as clouds crowd over the sun. The street outside grows darker and a few drops of rain fall, pinpricks across the pavement. Great, knobbly oaks and sweeping acacias provide some shade to the red bricks and wrought iron. Someone’s car—navy, almost black—draws past, windscreen wipers lashing out harshly and the gentle rain. Passingly, Percy thinks, Arthur would know what kind of car that was.

Not that he’s spoken to Arthur yet. Since the funeral.

Actually, Percy hasn’t spoken to anyone since the funeral. He’s just stayed in bed and watched the light and pretended everything was fine. Today, though…

There’s a French-owned patisserie a short walk from his flat. Their raspberry tarts are better than any social contact. Percy gets dressed and showered quickly and tucks his wand into the deep pockets of his most faded jeans—passing for a Muggle, he walks out into the rain without an umbrella and he focuses on the little things, the lights that flash by with the traffic and their reflections off windows and the way the colour of the pavement changes when the rain falls, pooling in the cracks grown over with miniscule weeds, as Percy watches and takes care not to step on them, one step at a time.

 

ii.

The idea of having “friends” is foreign to Percy; it’s not something he’s never experienced, but neither is it something he’s experienced for a long time, definitely not since Hogwarts. He lost track of everyone soon after he graduated, prioritising his career over what little social life he had. So it’s not something he expects to reconnect with after the Battle—the concept of “friendship,” not anyone in particular—and yet here it is, knocking at his door.

He knows it’s not anyone from his family, because they’re waiting for him to come to them. And it can’t be anyone from the Ministry, because they would owl ahead. There’s only one person who’s been to his flat since he moved in.

“Afternoon,” Penny says. “I figured you might have slept in on a day like today, so I brought breakfast.”

It’s hot outside, worse than it’s been all summer, and Penny is holding up two grease-stained paper bags bearing the stamped mark of the patisserie around the block.

“What are you doing here?” is all Percy can say.

“Five year reunion’s still a year away,” she says. “I couldn’t wait that long to catch up with you.”

She doesn’t know. She can’t know. Muggleborn, she would have spent the last year—where? In hiding? In Azkaban? He didn’t try to contact her once. Percy is so overcome with shame that he almost keels over on the spot. And yet—she’s smiling. Her hair is still long and she’s still beautiful.

“I shouldn’t have waited, either,” he says.

Penny beams at him. “Ham and cheese croissants. Can I come in?”

Percy sets the table for two, plates and knives and forks, more washing up than he’s done in a long time, since the last time he cleaned all of his crockery for no particular reason. Penny bypasses the cutlery to eat with her hands.

“So what have you been—”

“This last year.” Percy beats her to it. “Were you… safe?”

Penny looks down at her greasy fingers. “I was in Azkaban. I won’t pretend it wasn’t awful, but I had to keep thinking about—about something good, you know? So I just kept reminding myself that for now, I was safe. I wasn’t out there fighting. I _was_ safe, Percy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She looks up again, smile unfailing. “It must have been awful, being stuck at the Ministry with that lot in charge.”

“I just wish—” Percy stops. His words feel caught somehow, stuck as half-formed thoughts. “I wish I’d noticed sooner. I wish I’d done more.”

“I heard you fought in the Battle of Hogwarts,” Penny says, “while I was still stuck in Azkaban. They told us about it as we were liberated, the day after. I thought—well of course I knew in my heart that you’d been there, but it was only when I spoke to George that I—”

“You spoke to George? What did he say about me?”

After a pause, Penny says, “That you were there when it happened, and that he was glad someone was.”

“He won’t talk to me,” Percy says.

“Or you won’t talk to him,” Penny says. “Give it time. Wait until you’re ready.”

Percy thinks that this is all he needed. Penny reaches across the table and takes his hand in hers, and he only flinches a little bit as her thumb smears grease across the back of his wrist. That’s all it takes. He tells her everything.

 

iii.

She manages it at last. After a month restricting himself to his flat and anywhere within walking distance—this includes his therapist’s office, mercifully—Penny gets Percy to come out with her, properly. They catch the tube and go to a Muggle pub to see a Muggle band. This is where Penny comes from, and this, she says, is how you heal: you do something you’ve never done before, you do it slower than you would usually, and you let yourself get lost in the moment.

The pub is dimly-lit and the beer is cheap. The soles of Percy’s shoes stick to the carpet and he can’t stand the music, but the beer is cheap and Percy gets drunk enough that he doesn’t care about the carpet or the music. He wants to go the whole way and hit on a stranger, but after two different men bare down lecherously on Penny and she tells them Percy’s her boyfriend, he gets the picture. This is not a friendly place for her. He puts his arm around her shoulder and pretends that they’re back at Hogwarts, only without all of that ridiculous sneaking about.

When the band are done playing, they spill out onto the street with at least half of the rest of the crowd. It’s past midnight and there’s still noise everywhere, yellow lamps flickering against the blue night sky, cars rushing by, people coming out of other bars. Percy keeps his hold on Penny and she leans gratefully against him.

“Thank you for this,” Penny says.

Percy looks at her curiously. His glasses are smudged. “I ought to be thanking you.”

“I think not. This is the first time I’ve been around so many other people since Azkaban. I don’t think I could have done it without you.”

“You said you were trying to get me out of the house.”

“Ulterior motives.” Penny winks at him. “So, where next? More drinks? Yours or mine?”

Percy stills.

“Not like that,” she adds hastily.

“Of course not like that,” he says. They keep walking.

Forging a path through the crowd, uncoordinated and swaying, Percy walks straight into someone burly, and his life flashes before his eyes. He’s heard horror stories—this man is going to beat him up and take his money and dump his body in the river and—

“Watch where you’re going,” the man says.

“Oh,” Percy says. He thinks he might survive this encounter after all. “Oliver?”

Oliver goes comically bug-eyed; his jaw actually drops. “Bloody hell, you scared the shit out of me! Here I am walking along, I walk into a tall bloke and I think I’m done for, and who is it but Percy Weasley? And is that Penny Clearwater? I don’t believe my eyes!”

“The one and only,” Penny says.

“Feels like it’s been five hundred years,” Oliver says, even though he and Percy had seen each other at the Battle, fought alongside one another; Oliver had grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the way of falling rubble, and Percy had looked at him for so long he felt as though he might have been stunned, before snapping himself out of it and running in the other direction, the ghost of Oliver’s skin against his following him back into the thick of the fighting.

“Four years,” Percy corrects him. He really does feel like he’s back at Hogwarts, now. He makes a conscious effort to keep his tone neutral, hiding any evidence of his inebriation. “How are you, Oliver?”

Oliver shrugs. “Coping just about as well as any of us.”

He has no idea how badly I’m coping, Percy thinks.

“We should catch up some time,” Penny says, shaking Percy off her. “You still in touch with anyone from Hogwarts?”

“A couple of people. Not the most important ones, though.”

“There’s no need for empty flattery,” Percy says.

There’s something about Oliver that’s always brought out the worst in him. Oliver wilts a little, and Percy does feel bad, but he knows that he needs to hold Oliver at arm’s length, the way he’s always done. Fundamentally, they were always too similar, always riled up about one thing or another, and never about the same thing at the same time. Sometimes they’d shouted at each other in such marathon bursts that Percy had wanted nothing more than to kiss Oliver senseless. He had refrained then; he could certainly keep himself in check now.

“Still want to catch up with you properly, though,” Oliver says. “How’s Sunday?”

“Sunday is fine.” Percy can reschedule with his therapist. She’ll understand.

“Damn,” Penny says, “I’m seeing my cousins on Sunday.”

Percy begins, “We can choose another—”

“Just you and me then, Percy,” Oliver says. “Can I owl you?”

“If you must,” Percy says; he finds that he’s smiling, despite himself. “There’s a nice patisserie near my flat. We could get tea.”

Penny nudges him. He ignores her.

“Sounds great,” Oliver says.

As they part, going opposite directions, Percy stumbles over his own feet and his shoulder knocks painfully against Oliver’s. Oliver laughs at him, and Penny grabs his arm. Percy hobbles forward on a stubbed toe.

“Shit,” he says, once Oliver is out of earshot, “I was so worried about my speech patterns that I forgot about my gait.”

Now Penny’s laughing too. “Did you really think he’d believe that you’re sober?”

“Oh, shut up,” Percy says. “Cousins? Really?”

 

iv.

Oliver has his own ideas about how to get Percy out of the house once in a while. Like Penny, he thinks that variety is the key. Unlike Penny, he does not think twice about things Percy already enjoys, like drinking, and very occasionally music. Oliver has always had a mind like a stunning spell, single-target and potentially lethal.

“Can’t believe you don’t own a broom,” Oliver says, for the fifteenth time and when they’re fifteen minutes into the field, brooms slung over their shoulders and up to their calves in long grass.

“Why would I have reason to?” Percy says. “This is a Ministry broom; I always borrow if I have to.”

“Yeah, alright. I guess you’d know all about broomstick regulations. Is this one up to standard?”

He holds his broom out. Percy has never had anything to do with broomstick regulations in his life. Oliver probably expects him to know the make and model and how it’s classified by the Ministry, Perfect Percy with his encyclopaedic knowledge of everything under the sun.

Percy plays along. “I think it passes muster,” he says. “Just.”

Oliver elbows him, broomstick swinging dangerously close to knocking Percy onto his arse. The grass grows higher, and when Oliver seems satisfied with how deep they’ve gone into the middle of nowhere, he stops, letting his broomstick hover in front of him while he pulls a Quaffle out of his bag.

“You any good at Quidditch?”

“Oliver, I agreed to fly with you. I did _not_ agree to throw a Quaffle around.”

“Coming from a family like yours, I bet you’re at least passable,” Oliver says, ignoring Percy entirely. “Still think it’s a pity Charlie didn’t play professionally. Ginny—well, she’s got another year or two of Hogwarts in her, doesn’t she? Still, I know the Harpies are looking to sign her. That’s something.”

Percy had no idea Ginny played Quidditch. He had barely spoken to her at the Battle, and since then it’s been what Penny calls his “self-imposed exile.” He has tried, to no avail, to explain that it’s only self-imposed because he knows exactly how poorly he’ll be received.

“I don’t play,” Percy says.

Oliver looks at him like this was the worst thing in the world. “Have you never played at all?”

“Well—no. Not _never_.”

He used to. When the war ended, Bill was off at Hogwarts and the twins were too young to play with Charlie, so Percy was dragged out and onto a broom. He was five; Charlie was nine and already bigger and faster, and it was a one-sided competition, like this would be. Percy’s used to letting someone else win.

“Then fly with me,” Oliver says. He tosses the Quaffle straight up, mounts his broom while it’s still airborne, and then catches it squarely in the palm of one hand.

“Why did we have to walk here?” Percy asks instead.

“Makes the kick-off all the more satisfying. If you don’t get on your broom, I’m going to throw this at you and you’ll have to catch it whether you’re ready or—”

“Alright, alright.”

It’s been months since Percy last mounted a broom. Over a year, maybe. He can’t remember. His trousers are cuffed even though they’re the right length for him—they’re old, the hems are frayed—and the grass tickles his ankles as it relinquishes him to the sky. He’d thought he might be rusty after so long, but flying comes to him like breathing. There are days when breathing is harder than this. He catches up to Oliver easily, but misses the Quaffle as it’s thrown his way.

“Never mind,” Oliver says, summoning it back. “You’re not bad at this, you know?”

“Are you talking to me?”

“Flying, I mean. Come on. Three more and then I’ll be Keeper.”

“This really is all you think about, isn’t it,” Percy says. He doesn’t mean it to sound like an insult, but inevitably it does. Really, he envies Oliver. He wishes there was one thing for which he could harbour such passion.

“Used to be,” Oliver says. He throws the Quaffle again; Percy misses again. He wasn’t really trying. “Now that it’s my full-time job, I do need to have a life outside of Quidditch.”

Percy summons the Quaffle this time, flying closer to Oliver to pass it back. “That does surprise me. What do you do in your spare time? Read the Quidditch pages of the Prophet? Work on your strategies?”

“Did you always joke this much? I’ve taken up knitting, for your information, and I’m learning to play the guitar.”

“I apologise for doubting you,” Percy says.

He doesn’t smile; with any luck Oliver won’t recognise that this is anyone different to Perfect Percy who doesn’t joke. Perfect Percy is so busy not smiling that he misses Oliver’s second toss.

“One more,” Oliver says. “Be ready this time.”

Percy flies some distance away and steadies himself. He worries that he’ll overbalance when the Quaffle comes his way, maybe fall to his death. He imagines Oliver saving him. He’s halfway through acting out a scenario when he sees the Quaffle flying towards, just to the left of reasonable catching distance. What’s another miss?

But at the last minute, something pulled taut inside him snaps neatly in two, and he swerves. The Quaffle folds in between his arms and he holds it close to his chest as though otherwise it might break.

“Percy,” Oliver says. “ _Wow_.”

The look in Oliver’s eyes is not something Percy can translate to coherent thought.

“Your turn to play Keeper,” Percy reminds him.

“No, let me throw you three more,” Oliver says. “Five more! Okay, four. Four more, Perce?”

“Three more.”

Percy throws the quaffle back at him; it’s not a very good throw at all, and it starts plummeting somewhere between them, but Oliver dives for it, and Percy wishes, _wishes_ he could be so devoted to one thing.

 

v.

Autumn arrives unannounced in an overnight thunderstorm, rains that last all through the next day, and a biting wind blowing through London. Percy closes all of his windows and puts heating charms throughout the flat, which doesn’t stop him from cocooning himself in a duvet and spending the afternoon on the couch staring at the wall.

This is how Penny finds him. She now has his express permission to Apparate into the flat without owling ahead, which is probably just as well, because Percy doesn’t have the energy to explain why he hasn’t put dinner on yet.

“Sorry,” Penny says, by way of a greeting, “group therapy ran late. You know how it is.”

He doesn’t. Percy can’t think of any worse form of torture than sharing his feelings with near-strangers, but he supposes that when you’ve spent a year in Azkaban, torture is relative.

“There’s no food yet,” he says.

Penny shrugs. “No problem. I’m just happy to listen to the rain, on a day like this.”

“That’s about all there is to do around here. Oliver keeps saying I should get a television—he’s started following something called ‘football’—but I won’t have any income until I go back to work in November, so I’ve held off.”

“Take a guess,” Penny says. “What do you think football is?”

“Muggle Quidditch?”

She looks at him for a moment, and then laughs. “Close enough.”

“You’d know all about television,” Percy says. “And football, I suppose.”

“Yeah, we call it ‘telly,’ mostly. There’s one at my parent’s place. You can come ‘round and watch sometime. Who knows, maybe you’ll get hooked on soaps.”

“Soaps?”

The rain falls harder outside; Penny explains soap operas and football and the Muggle news, and she starts on electricity, but Percy already knows the basic principles from a combination of his father’s babbling, Muggle Studies, and his own reading. He opens up one side of the duvet and lets Penny under, and she leans her head against his shoulder, and Percy doesn’t find himself missing their Hogsmeade dates at all.

“Speaking of Oliver,” she says, even though they hadn’t been, “how are things with you two?”

“I hardly have a good measure of it, given he’s one of two people I could call a friend.”

“Seems like you might be calling him something else, soon.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Percy says. “If he wanted to be something else, he’d tell me. You don’t know Oliver like I do. He’s straightforward.”

“He was straightforward when you were teenagers who lived in the same room for seven years and knew every detail of each others’ lives. I’m just pointing out, Percy, you don’t know him as well as he used to, and we’re all different people to who we were even _months_ ago—think what years can do.”

“Presuming you’re right. Even if he’s changed that much, I can’t possibly imagine—I can’t even say it aloud.”

Penny says it for him. “That he’d fancy you?”

Percy swallows, nods.

“And if he doesn’t, you lose nothing by pursuing him,” she continues. “Remember when we went out?”

For the most part, Percy had been trying not to. “Of course.”

“I had to make every move because you were too nervous to so much as suggest what time we’d meet up. Don’t let this be like that. You need to make the first move or Oliver’s going to keep thinking you’re all aloof and not a bit interested in him.”

Percy wants to deny it, but he’s been so conscientiously schooling himself into neutrality when he’s around Oliver that there are no other words for it. The thing is, Percy doesn’t know how else to be. He never has. He’s not sure how he manages to be so open with Penny. It’s never happened with anyone else, least of all someone like Oliver. He’s built to have an audience, not a sympathetic ear.

“I’m not sure if I am interested in him.”

Which is a great big lie, and they both know it.

Thankfully, Penny doesn’t press. “Want to start cooking? I’ll help.”

“Hot chocolates first, I think,” Percy said. “To keep us warm while we’re working.”

“Spiked with firewhisky. Excellent idea.”

“You know me so well.”

 

vi.

Oliver lives in the kind of country cottage that Percy dimly remembers moving between during the first five years of his childhood, and which have since been sold off to the upper-middle-elderly looking for a quiet post-retirement lifestyle close to an establishment greengrocer and a bowling green. This one is sublet between Oliver and a few others his age, presumably because nobody respectable would take it; it isn’t looking too safe a house. What might have been a rose garden out front looks more like a Triwizard Tournament task, and the pavers on the path to the front door have been reduced to the last ports of resistance against encroaching weeds.

Percy takes care to step in the centre of each paver. He very seriously contemplates apparating up the stoop instead of taking his chances on the rotting wooden steps. There are an uneven three steps, which bothers him, but in the end he just skips the middle one and plants himself in front of the door, listening to his breathing for a few moments—the little things—before knocking.

There’s no answer. Which is fine; Oliver could be out, he could be in the bathroom, he could be leaving it for one of the others to answer, because he’s not expecting anyone. Percy wouldn’t blame him for that. He wasn’t expecting to be here, either. Spontaneity is not usually his _modus operandi_.

Then—all of a sudden, the door’s open, and Oliver’s standing there, and Percy loses track of his breathing again.

“Perce, what are you—is everything okay?”

“Should things not be okay?” Percy raises his eyebrows coolly, but his heart is hammering. “This is a social call, if you can believe it.”

“Bad timing,” Oliver says, scratching the back of his head. “I’m just off to training.”

“Oh. Then I’ll—”

“Don’t—”

Oliver reaches out; his fingers close around Percy’s wrist and Percy has to bite his lips to stop himself from blurting out something embarrassing.

“Don’t go,” Oliver finishes. “You can come and watch. That’s not weird, is it?”

“No, of course not,” Percy says. “Why would it be weird?”

“No reason,” Oliver says. He lets go of Percy’s arm.

So this is what making the first move feels like, Percy thinks. He quite likes it. For the first time since the funeral, he’s strayed far from his flat of his own accord. He’s making plans and he’s following through. He’s not going on a date, but he’s going to watch Oliver get that flush across his cheeks which means he’s been flying high and fast, and for now that’s close enough.

Most importantly, there’s nothing here for Percy to feel guilty about. That’s the biggest first step he could possibly take. The rest is Oliver taking his hand and Apparating the both of them to Puddlemere United’s home pitch, Percy sitting in the stands, watching and focusing on the little things.


End file.
